Mid-May update

I love this bit of the year. I think the best way to demonstrate that is with three photos:

January

Start of May

Today and the great wall of potatoes

Everything is growing, some of it is even outgrowing the things that are trying to eat it, and I feel like I might not starve next month when the moratorium on shop-bought vegetables kicks in.

One thing which hasn't gone to plan is cauliflower. Under the original plan, May's vegetables were supposed to be cauliflower, cabbage and carrots that were planted back in January. This has turned out to be grotesquely over-optimistic and mostly constructed from how long it took to get vegetables last year from pre-bought seedlings, rather than this year's growing completely from seed. I think next year's May will rely a lot more on vegetables frozen over the winter than I expected.

Anyway, the carrots are good, the cabbage has bounced back, but the cauliflower has proven to be both fiddly and utterly delicious to whatever's eating my crops (and exading all slug pellets, cloches, barriers, nets, anything to still eat at its whim. But that's another post for another day). So, I've decided to cheat.

George's Marvellous Medicine in full effect!

Since I do want to actually eat some cauliflower this year, and some of the beds that currently have cauliflowers are due to be replanted in July/August with purple sprouting broccoli and winter and spring cauliflower, I made the decision to ditch some of the less promising home-grown seedlings and replace them with fully grown plantlings from the local garden centre. I can thoroughly recommend this route to anyone else who fancies growing some brassica and is starting late in the year/can't be bothered with seeds - £3 gets you 9 big plantlings which are all likely to turn into real plants.

Everything apart from the cauliflower is going great guns though. Here are the broccoli and a cabbage at the back.

These are all home-grown, which I think demonstrates just how much of a slacker that cauliflower above was being. Rubbish.

And the fruits are looking promising too. There are 9 figs ripening, the pear tree is covered in little pearlets, the strawberries are pocked with little white flowers, the raspberries and loganberries are shooting up and even the grape vine is considering the possibility of grapes. Nothing major from the cherry, plum, blackberry, gooseberry or blueberries yet, but it is the first year for all of them so we make allowances.

Hopefully next month should be all about the harvesting!

PJW